January 2014

By now you know that Audio Smut is full frontal radio (oops, podcast) that might just cause steam to come out of your earbuds. And prepare yourself for more barrier breaking episodes, because season two of provocative listening is right around the corner, just in time for the emotional high of Valentine's. But if you'd like a more heightened Audio Smut experience, be at Union Docs in Brooklyn on Feb. 15 when the show goes live and lusty.

Kaitlin, what's the division of labor between you, Mitra and the rest of the Audio Smut team?

Kaitlin Prest: On the production/creative end, it's so collaborative it's often hard to figure out who is entirely responsible for what—-it can get pretty complicated. We develop everything collaboratively. I edit Mitra, she edits me. We cut each others tape. We follow up on each others' ideas. Last season Rae Dooley, Julia Alsop and Jen Ng were part of that mix as well. For our next season, we're divying up the episodes so that Mitra is driving four, and I'm driving four. But it will likely get all mixed up in the end, as we each help the stories to grow -- and we each have to agree on the final product.

It's only very recently that we developed titles for the staff, for the sake of clarity and efficiency. The show started as a collective, which means that everyone does everything (no matter what their experience level or their level of involvement may be). As is usually the case with collectives though, people emerged who were more invested and more involved.

When Mitra moved to NYC in 2012, our mission was to take the show to a professional level. At that point we decided we were partners, and started calling ourselves the creative directors. From then on we became a unit.

The administrative side is a little easier to separate out. I manage staff and outreach, Mitra manages the relationships with our distributors and does all the social media. Jen does all of our design work. Right now we're working with Connie Ho on grant proposals.

You and your cohorts apparently made a decision to go for an intelligent approach to sex instead of shock value. True?

Mitra Kaboli: I’m continually amazed at the difficulty for people to understand that intelligent dialogue about sex exists. And I’m not really sure why sex tends to be shocking. It is everywhere and almost everybody does it! I don’t think shock value was ever something we considered. We just wanted to be honest and true to life.